Mary and Max (2009)

A young girl named Mary (Bethany Whitmore) is lonely out in the suburbs and finds the name of some stranger in the New York telephone directory, Max (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) and they strike up a strange sort of friendship via the power of the written word.

Over the course of the next decade we see how their friendship develops and what happens in each of their lives. As with any great relationship, there is going to be a point where you realise the effect you can have on the other person and this is displayed as well and is a major part of the story.

The older Mary (Toni Collette) is quite a bit like the younger Mary, which makes the story more realistic as there are lots of people who seem to be the same as you remember them, even if it is years after you have seen them last.

A lot has been said about the scenes in Australia being very brown, but I thought they are more a state of mind and they also reminded me of faded photos from the 70s. The New York scenes were great and stylised exactly the way you would imagine the 1970s version of the city to look like.

I really enjoy this animation style as you can see the work that has gone into it with all the detail and I like seeing the fingerprints of the animator on the models as it gives it lots more character.

It has been said that the story is dark, but I just thought it was realistic as not everything that happens to someone is good all the time so it is much more like real life than people are used to seeing.

An excellent follow up to Harvie Krumpet and I look forward to seeing more movies from Adam Elliot’s production company in the future.